Reseeding the clouds?

What features would you like to see in Pixelmator Pro?
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2020-12-16 13:21:42

This is about the Clouds generator, and a possible minor issue with how it's not random.

Long ago, I developed a trick for creating "parchments" with nicely deckled and lightly torn edges in Photoshop. At its heart, It involved applying a Clouds layer as a hard mix onto a rectangle with a lot of Gaussian blur to create the roughed paper shape. Then embossed clouds and a color adjustment layer textured the paper. And it was good.

Now that I'm working in apps beside Photoshop since Adobe moved to the Captive Cloud model, I'm getting the hang of it in other places, like in Pixelmator Pro (and Affinity Photo, but that's beside the point). And the technique mostly works.

All that said, the "mostly" is the Clouds generator. It will generate a layer of black-and-white noise as it's supposed to and almost exactly like I need, but it generates the same noise pattern every single time it's applied. Some small variation can be introduced by dragging it around (and the ability to drag the center point "off the canvas" may be a saving grace here), but it still involves a tweak in the application of the Clouds layer rather than a tick box or field which autopopulates with a random number based on the current time and CPU temperature or something like.

Could we have a version of Clouds that has more randomness to it, please?
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2020-12-17 10:43:56

Hey Territan. Clouds is a nondestructive effect which means it always has to be displayed consistently, so an ON/OFF button or a checkbox wouldn't exactly work here. An additional slider for randomizing the cloud pattern could probably do the trick though. We'll have to think about it!
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2020-12-17 13:03:39

I fully understand that the effect has to be consistent when applied. It's just a little galling that an effect that relies so much on randomness is generated with the same values every time it's instanced. Whatever that is, it's not random.

Here's what I was thinking:

The clouds have to be generated with some sort of seed value. Add a text field to the effect's controls that contains that seed value. The effect can even spawn with the exact same seed value every time for that consistency. If people want to use a different value they know works for their project, they can put that value into the text field.

If people want to try different seed values to see what they look like, they can edit the text field randomly, or you can add a button next to the text field that will put a highly randomized new value into the text box.

Two controls, one bit of code for the reseed button, one low-priority enhancement for an already great program. There may also be other places that this paradigm could be added in. What other effects rely on randomness, but generate the same way every time?
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2020-12-18 15:28:28

by Territan Two controls, one bit of code for the reseed button, one low-priority enhancement for an already great program. There may also be other places that this paradigm could be added in. What other effects rely on randomness, but generate the same way every time?
The Noise and possibly the Grain adjustment are also in the same boat here.

Just to expand on this a little, the main issue is that with a nondestructive effect – the same value has to produce the same result, otherwise, certain discrepancies would start to appear. Say, if you were to duplicate a layer with the effect applied, each duplicate would look different. I'm sure there are others, but that's one that comes to mind. So, generally speaking, a consistent result is preferable to avoid surprises.

However, a second control (e.g., a slider) to add randomness would be possible – we'll look into this.